Fugue States
by nichoir
Summary: AU. Shannon Moore, Matt Morgan and RVD are part of a unified but turbulent resistance to Immortal when Jeff is attacked and claims to no longer recall his heel-turn. Warning: blood, violence, sex.
1. In Medias Res

**Title:** Fugue States

**Chapter Title:** 1 - In Medias Res

**Character(s): **Jeff Hardy, Matt Morgan, Rob Van Dam, Shannon Moore, Mr. Anderson

**Rating:** 15

**Wordcount:** 2,146

**Disclaimer:** The characters in this fiction are the property of TNA and the people who use them – certainly not mine. I'm only using them for fun.

**Summary:** Future AU regarding the current events at TNA (at time of writing). Jeff's the anti-christ of professional wrestling, RVD's kinda fucked up, and Shannon's never gonna stop caring about Jeff. But something is happening.

**A/N:** So, yeah! Here goes my first fic in this fandom. Kayfabe's pretty real (it's damn real).

...

"Lock the door. Lock the fucking door, right now."

Fading into feeling, Jeff was aware that he was upside down. His skull felt tense and bloodlocked, throbbing. His mouth was choked with blood. He tried to spit; blood bubbled wet on his lips and the effort in his diaphragm radiated agony through his chest. He whimpered. His ribs felt raw.

"Is it shut?"

"Yeah, it's locked."

"Keep a lookout."

Familiar voices. Rob. Shannon. Jeff sought for his own voice, but it was thready and lost somewhere in his hurting throat. The pressure of a shoulder in his midriff was a great nexus of pain. Arms were wrapped around his legs. He was moving. And, suddenly, an agony of motion: hauled backwards, landing hard on his back. A flare of pain; he cried out, despite himself.

"I hope it hurts, fucker." Loud, close. Hot breath in the shell of his ear.

There was light, and cool air on his skin. He tried to open his eyes. It stung, blood in his eyelashes.

"Jeff? Jeff, can you hear me?" A different voice, not a friend. Not an enemy. Jeff squinted, blinded by the light.

...

"Jeff, it's Nick, Nick Nowak. Physical therapy? Do you remember me? I'm just gonna have a little look at your injuries, okay?"

Rob leant, his back against the door, his head turned to the wall. Shannon had snatched Nick Nowak from the corridor, arms full of dressings and surgical tape. The trainer had the medic voice down: loud, authoritative, reassuring, your mom's voice when you fell and bloodied your knee as a kid. Rob wondered if Jeff could even hear it.

His hands, at his sides, clenched – relaxed – clenched, making fists. He'd wanted to be the one to beat Hardy to a bloody mash. Wanted it so much it itched in his brain, his knuckles.

"Pass me that, will you? No, _that_. Thank you. Okay, Jeff..." Nick Nowak, moving at the edge of Rob's vision.

Matt Morgan appeared at Rob's shoulder, looming over him (quiet for a big man) and casting a deep shadow. "Rob."

Rob craned to glare at him. "What?"

"Hardy's fucked up."

"No shit."

"No, I mean," Matt palmed the back of his skull, massaging. "He's not right. In the head."

Rob fixed him with a stare, folded his arms. "Are you for real?" He leaned into Matt, standing on his toes to snarl into his face. Matt recoiled, setting his jaw. "Don't ask me to give a crap about that little shit. The only reason I care if he lives or dies is so I can get a turn at killing him myself."

…

"Okay, Jeff. I'm just going to have a look at your head injuries now, assess how you are. I'm just gonna clean you up a bit."

Cold on his forehead, suddenly, running down his temples and into his hair, down into the wells of his eyes. Jeff blinked it away, trying to focus. Darkness moved above him, in a man-shape. Hands came down to his face, pulling at his wounds. He grimaced, cringing away. Felt rubber and padding against his skin. When he spoke, he didn't recognise his own voice. "Hey," he swallowed, dry, and tried again. "Hey. Hey. Stop."

The hands hesitated, hovering over his face.

"Who are you?" Jeff lifted his arm – an effort – and raised his hand tremblingly to his face. The man caught his wrist.

"Hey, now, don't do that. I'm disinfecting your cuts. Don't touch."

Jeff looked from the man's vague face to his hand in his grip. "No, wait. What – what happened? Where am I? Who are you?" Pressure that had nothing to do with hurt was rising in his chest, tripping his heart against his ribs.

The stranger's face leaned down to him, zooming out of the ether, and suddenly was less strange. "Jeff, my name is Nick Nowak. I'm a trainer, do you remember? You're in Orlando."

Jeff nodded, hesitantly. His jaw was clamped shut against the pressure in his chest.

"I'm just gonna do a few tests, okay? I'm gonna shine a light in your eyes, get you to follow a pen, you know the drill." Nick's hand was still on Jeff's wrist, gentler and warm.

A touch to his ankle made him start, needling his ribs, his insides. Shannon's voice, from his feet: "You're gonna be just fine, Jeffro, man." He'd know it anywhere.

The penlight ambushed him, blinding one eye and stabbing pain into his skull. It danced from one eye to the other, back again, again. Then it was gone, and it was 'follow the pen with your eyes' and Jeff _did_ know the drill, so he did. While he followed it, up, down and side-to-side, Nick probed his scalp with a thumb.

"Okay, Jeff, just answer a few questions for me, easy stuff. Can you tell me what year it is?"

Jeff wet his dry mouth. "It's two-thousand ten."

"And your brother's name?"

"Matthew."

"Good. And who is the President?"

"Dixie Carter."

Nick frowned. "No, I mean the President of the United States."

"Oh." Jeff smiled with one corner of his mouth, weakly. "Barack Obama."

The pen was removed from before his eyes, and Nick leaned forward again, sharp-eyed. "Jeff, can you tell me what day it is?"

"It's Tuesday."

Nick lifted his head, dimpled his lip in agreement.

"Yeah." Jeff nodded, scalp tight against the irritation. "It's Tuesday the fifth."

Nick's frown returned, darkening his eyes. "Not quite right. It's the sixteenth."

"No." Jeff stared at him. "No, it's the fifth. I have a calendar."

"Jeff," Nick said, articulating carefully, "what month is it?"

"It's October. October the fifth."

…

Shannon's hand slipped from Jeff's ankle. _October 5th_. It made no sense. _October 5th_? A month of darkness, a month of unreturned calls and middle-of-the-night worry, erased in Jeff Hardy's brain. Jeff Hardy, torn and beaten here on the physio table, lathered with blood, still, to Shannon, the scrappy, skinny kid from Cameron, North Carolina. (Always that same kid.)

"No," he blurted, standing to look down on him. "Jeff, no."

Jeff looked at him, eyes bright in a mask of blood and paint.

"Jeffro, it's not October anymore."

"What do you mean?" His voice was thick. It sounded like a mouthful of blood, swollen lips, bitten tongue.

"It's November. November the tenth."

Nick held out a gloved hand, palm out, to Shannon. "Just stop, now." Jeff shook his head, mouth opening and closing wordlessly. Nick put a hand to his shoulder. "Don't worry, Jeff, just be calm. You're among friends."

From the corner of the room, shadowed, Rob snorted. Shannon glanced over. Matt was leaning, his back to the wall, his arms crossed. He raised an eyebrow. Rob didn't look back.

Jeff was wriggling further up the bench, pushing Nick's hands away. "No, no! You're wrong, I swear to God..." He drew his knees up after him. "You're wrong. Shannon?" Pleading. "This is a joke, right?"

Shannon stumbled around the bench, grasping for Jeff's hand. "Jeff, Jeffro, it's okay, man." He squeezed Jeff's hand between his two. "Everything's gonna be fine, just take it easy."

Jeff looked from Shannon to Nick, back to Shannon. Then he settled on Rob and Matt, next to the door; Rob's jaw set, Matt sweat-sheened with tired shoulders. "You guys?"

…

Matt rolled his eyes toward Rob. Rob was staring at the floor, grinding his teeth, a picture of tension. Matt looked back at the cluster 'round the physio bench: Shannon, clutching at Jeff; Jeff, like a panicked animal in a trap; Nick, the trainer, making soothing noises and patting the air with his spread hands. "Are you for real, Hardy?"

"Matt," Shannon narrowed his eyes, "does this look like a stunt to you?"

Matt shrugged, stretching the aching muscles in his shoulders. "This is Jeff Hardy we're talking about. The _antichrist of professional wrestling_, remember?"

Jeff's eyebrows knit. "What?"

"Stop being so fucking hostile and get over here. This is _serious,_" Shannon growled.

There was silence for a moment, thick and palpable. Matt unfolded his arms, took a step away from the wall, toward Shannon and Jeff. Squaring up. "I don't wanna have to kick your ass, pipsqueak. And I'm not the type for sitting by bedsides. I'm out. I need to shower that little rat's blood off me."

Shannon dropped Jeff's hand, clenching his own into white-knuckled fists. He quivered. Matt turned his back on him.

"Rob," Matt said. Rob looked up at him, eyes dark and turbulent. "Dude, you comin'?"

"Yeah." Rob pushed away from the door, unlocked it.

"We're supposed to be in this together!" Shannon called, behind them. "We can't do this if we split up. That's what they want!"

"We're not splitting up," Matt spat back, over his shoulder. "I just can't don't think it's healthy for me and Rob to be in the same room as _him_ for much longer. Got it?"

"Rob?" Jeff's voice, half-hoarse and tremulous.

Rob's shoulders tensed. He didn't turn back. Five seconds of wire-taut silence. Then, Rob shook his head, as if to clear it. "Come on, Matt." He swung the door open, and disappeared through it.

Shannon held out a hand. "Matt." Matt glanced back, raising his eyebrows. "Just be careful."

Matt snorted. "Abyss doesn't scare me. Fortune don't. We'll be fine." With that, he turned and left, closing the door behind him.

…

Jeff's head hit the bench, eyes sliding closed. He wanted the dark, and the silence. He wanted to sleep again. But he felt Shannon's cool hands on his hot skin, fluttering, nervous, like birds. "Jeff? Jeffro?" Voice so quiet, uncertain.

Nick's voice, too, rubber-gloves at his wrist, his neck, his forehead. "Jeff, can you hear me? Are you awake?"

Jeff nodded, barely, without opening his eyes. His head was too full of thoughts like broken glass, his body full of hurt. Rob's dark eyes that wouldn't look at him; Matt's shoulder smeared with his blood. He felt, suddenly, exhausted. Every cell ached.

Nick's voice blurred into nonsense, babbling at his ear. Shannon's hands, gripping his again, so far away as to be intangible. The pain in his body, his head, his fucking _face_, was a whole world. With a spark of strength, he turned his head to where he thought Shannon was sitting. "Shan."

"Jeffro?"

Jeff tried to wet his dry lips, tasted clotting blood. "Call Matt. Please. Call my brother." He didn't hear Shannon reply. Having given up the last of his energy, he sank back and slept again.

…

Over one thousand miles north of Orlando, it was below freezing and deep dark in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The world outside sparkled and cracked with ice. Ken Anderson was sprawled on sagging couch in a golden-lit living room, woolly-hatted and layed in thermals, boots covered in ice and mud. He had a laptop on his lap.

He wasn't supposed to be exerting himself. He was supposed to be paying attention to his headaches. And maybe he would, in a minute. But this was just too sweet to postpone.

The video he had been sent was from the most recent TNA taping: Jeff Hardy, painted and suited, a dark nebula in the ring, still and dreamy, like he always was these days – until something seemed to break. Moments later, there was Abyss, lumbering to the ring, with Janice the horrified focus of everyone's attention but Hardy's.

Ken had already watched the video twice. Hardy, curled into himself, hands over his head, taking it, taking. From a wide shot: a little bloody comma all alone in the ring, towered over by a monster. In between beatings, Jeff had reached out to the ropes, just once, with a trembling hand, as if there should be someone there to tag him out and save him.

There was no one there, only a void of what should have been, and Jeff Hardy had withdrawn back into himself under the blows of Janice, of nails and wood. He left a smear of blood on the canvas.

There was no one there, until there was. Matt, and Rob, and of course Shannon. Ken didn't know why. He didn't care. It was simply delicious to watch Jeff Hardy get beaten into 215 pounds of hamburger reaching out for where he, Ken Anderson, used to be, but was no longer.


	2. Aegrotat

**Title:** Fugue States

**Chapter Title:** 2 – Aegrotat

**Character(s): **Jeff Hardy, Rob Van Dam, Shannon Moore

**Rating:** 15

**Wordcount:** 2,102

**Disclaimer:** The characters in this fiction are the property of TNA and the people who use them – they are nothing to do with me. All that I've written is just a fantasy.

**Summary:** Jeff awakes, Shannon does something stupid, Rob angsts.

**A/N:** Well, this took a while. Hopefully the next instalment won't.

…

Jeff rose up through black unconsciousness like a bubble, silvery and shivering; he broke the surface gasping. There was bright daylight and cold air on his skin. Everything was strange. He was blind for a moment; then light and darkness resolved themselves into vague forms.

His body was full of ache. His eyes were gummy, the left barely open. For a moment, he didn't try to move; just lay on his back, listening to the sound of his breath rasping and subsiding, a painful tide. He was alone. He knew where he was.

Flaking plaster ceiling, dust and spiderwebs. Ugly brown brick for walls. The tall windows let the light in, bright bars of Florida sun slanting to the floorboards. It was his place, his empty city pad. Jeff parted his desiccated lips, wet them. Cleared his throat; the effort in his ribcage stabbing pain through his belly, his chest. Tried to make noise. "Matt?" It came out thin and hoarse, like an old man's voice. "Matty?"

There was only the silence of an empty apartment, the faint growl of traffic outside, swelling and subsiding.

Jeff moved his fingers experimentally – first right, then left – and then flexed his toes. He tried to make a fist with his right hand; his fingers curled into his palm, weakly. Biting down on his ravaged lower lip, he brought his arm up, straight at first, then bending, to spay his hand across his face. Darkness. Relief. It didn't hurt. Not much. He had been afraid that he was irreparably broken.

His face, though, his _face_ – it felt wrong. Lumpy, swollen, tender. Here and there rough with old blood. His left eye was a slit between massive lids, juicy and swollen, like overripe fruit. Jeff whimpered, between his teeth, heart tripping fast against his hurt ribs. He flailed one arm – flesh stretching over his ribs and flaring sudden pain at myriad locations. His hand found the mattress, the rucked linen sheet, seized and pulled at it, heaving himself up.

Sudden, massive pain, huge and crushing, like being hit by a truck. Unbearably tight at his chest, his stomach; couldn't breathe. Spots swam in front of his eyes, blinding bright. He was sitting, he was sitting, hands fisted in the sheets, jaw seized tight, waiting for the pain to subside. It didn't subside. He became aware of a thin, reedy whine penetrating the blood-haze of agony. It was coming from him.

He released the sheets, fell back to the bed, gasping. The hurt worked through him, like hands, gripping, pulling, punching. Hot tears pricked at his eyes, seeped out, wetting his face. An egg of emotion, vast and choking – frustration, misery, pain – rose up in his throat. He balled his hands into fists, raised them up – let them fall again. He turned his head to the side, breath raw in his throat. His vision began to clear, in his one good eye at least. The pain, like a tide, remained at high water. With the spots subsiding, something in his line of sight presented itself to him.

On the little card table beside the head of the bed, there was a clutter of things; his things, mostly. Notebooks, motley and well-used; dead tubes that used to contain oil paint, curled in on themselves; ink pens; charcoal; a pack of cigarettes. But there was something that was unfamiliar, that hadn't been there before.

A tall glass of water, and a little orange plastic bottle with a childproof cap. Jeff reached out a hand towards it, fingers palsied and twitching. He put his fingertips to it. It was real. He wrapped his hand around the little bottle, tight, and brought it to him, not bothering with the water.

…

Shannon stood in darkness. The murmur of the crowd fell soft all around him; soft now, the audience wondering amidst itself. Camera flashes went off like lightning strikes, throwing his shadow thin and angular onto the canvas in bursts of white light and intense shadow. The emptiness above him was a palpable weight, stretching up to the vaulted roof, bearing down with the cathedral's silent majesty.

He kept his head down, hands splayed stiff at his sides, feet armoured in his enormous, familiar boots and planted solid, apart. A rehearsed position. It wasn't hard, after all these years, to fall naturally into melodrama.

When the lights went up, bright, hard and all-consuming, and the crowd's babble rose into a scream, Shannon – for a heartbeat, two, three – didn't move. When he did, he made a production of surveying the crowd: slow head-turn, cold eyes. They cheered, they waved their arms, made excited faces.

Shannon hooked the microphone from the pocket of his coat. At his lips, he paused, breathing so that everyone could hear. Then he spoke. "Abyss."

The noise of the crowd rose again, louder, ascending in pitch.

"Abyss, you goddamn monster, I know you're out there." Shannon fixed his eyes on the runway. "You better listen to me, and listen good. What you did today, to Jeff, is only a repeat of what you've done to too many others, too many times. I don't care if there are people saying, 'oh, Jeff Hardy deserved it' and that he got what was coming to him. _I don't care_," he snarled. "You are _not_ gonna get away with it any more."

Louder, louder. He was becoming a hero, right in front of his own eyes. Shannon glanced around, gaze swinging around the stands. They loved it. The happiness on their faces.

He took a breath. "You and me, Abyss. Next week. No disqualifications." He could hardly hear his own voice on the speakers over the roar of the crowd. He held out a hand, palm out. They quieted, barely. "If you don't show, or if Bischoff nixes the match," he turned his eyes to glare back at the runway, "I know you're not just a bully but a coward, too."

He dropped the mic. He knew it would work, knew it would be scheduled. Shannon climbed from the ring, the corners of his eyes on the entrance. It remained empty. Good. No one would mess with him this week. He needed a week of grace.

Shannon knew that Immortal would honour his demand, simply because he had no hope in hell of facing up to the monster and winning. He was playing into their hands. They should be happy.

…

The studio was a labyrinth. It was a warren of echoing corridors, empty rooms. Little backstage nooks, crowded with technicians' gear. Fluorescent strip-lights making deep shadows and washed-out bright spots. It was, ultimately, a very easy place in which to hide.

Rob was hiding. He had been hiding for hours: in the steam-clouded, thick-smelling lockerroom, under the pound and hiss of the shower; smoking three unaccustomed cigarettes at the desolate back of the building; watching the spotlit ring from a backstage niche. He had witnessed Shannon's return. Shannon, so small, standing in his own shadow out on the canvas, bristling with rage.

Despite the hours and the scalding water and the soap, Rob's fingers still ghosted with the memory of Jeff Hardy's skin, his blood. He had touched him, barely, when they came to the rescue: fingertipping his body on the mat as if with reverence at the damage done; mouth open, tasting the stagelight heat and the thrill of Hardy's vulnerability. He could have done anything to him. All the things he dreamed of doing for weeks, coiled tense in his muscles every day. Hate was tangible: it was the ache in your jaw from clenching, it was the contusions on your knuckles from overtraining, it was the sound of his voice when he snapped at the people around him he was supposed to care about.

It was not only this, for Rob. It was, although he didn't admit it, even to himself, the strange urgency in his half-waking dreams, in the dark, a pulse of blood that sparked a craving like to scratch an itch. The things he wanted to do to Jeff Hardy. Things he couldn't tell, couldn't even imagine the words forming on his tongue. They would burn. They burned already, in him, every night.

These were the things that Rob was trying to hide from; it wasn't only people he couldn't face. All these dark, hot secrets – and the sound of Jeff's voice in the physio room, the voice of a man just awoken from a long, long sleep. A voice that frightened Rob with its uncertainty, its need. Its innocence.

…

When Shannon arrived back at Jeff's place, it was close to twilight, the sky growing cool and balanced on the edge of daylight. Jeff's apartment was full of shadows and silence. Shannon, just inside the door, stopped. He let his duffel bag (spare clothes, toothbrush, hairspray) hit the floor, unminded. He listened for the sound of breathing.

It was there. Thready, raw. But there. Shannon closed the door behind him, and went to check on Jeff.

Jeff's bed was little more than a mattress on the floor. A hastily-hung curtain surrounded it, barely seperating it from the rest of the apartment. Behind the curtain, it was dark, and Jeff looked worse than Shannon remembered. Cherry-red and plum-purple, misshapen. There was a scatter of white pills across his lap. His hand lay half-open, cradling the bottle. The expression on Jeff's face, such as it was discernable, looked strained.

Kneeling beside Jeff, Shannon gathered up the pills, eased the bottle from Jeff's hand. Jeff didn't stir. Shannon palmed the bottle, fingering it. For a moment he did nothing, but knelt on the splintery floorboards, watching Jeff's chest rise and fall with his breathing. His flesh, all tender and ripe with hurt, wrapped tight around his ribs in crisp white tape. Beetle-black stitches lacing up deep red scores. Wet scrapes, patterned bruises. Shannon grit his teeth, closed the bottle in a fist.

He screwed his eyes shut, and went somewhere else. Somewhere where it was summer, and the sun baked the sky pale above the greenest trees. The scratchy, taut feel of the trampoline under his bare skin, sweat-slick at first then sun-dry, lying under the Carolina sky with Jeff and Matt at his sides, arms, legs just touching, easily. Endless days, and balmy star-speckled nights that smelled of jasmine and sounded with crickets. Under the cover of these nights, shrouded with reefer smoke, Shannon sometimes watched Jeff, sometimes Matt, without even realising what he was doing.

Jeff was finely-cut, wiry, fair-haired and sun-kissed. Matt was sturdier, darker, older. He had an irresistable musk. Jeff looked more like a boy-angel. Shannon was in awe of them both.

Shannon was awoken by a touch on his hand, the one that held the pill bottle. He opened his eyes onto a room full of evening darkness; the bed; Jeff, eyes dark slots but open, awake. Alive. Jeff made shapes with his mouth. No sound came out. Shannon dropped the bottle, took the water that stood untouched on the little table beside the bed. He brought it to Jeff's lips. Jeff strained toward it, weak. Swallowed once, twice, wetting his chin, his chest. Shannon took the water away. Jeff sunk back into the pillow, eyes closing. He was silent for a long time. Shannon had begun to think that he'd fallen asleep again, getting ready to ease up, off his aching knees, when Jeff spoke.

"Shannon."

"Yeah?" Shannon barely more than whispered.

"What's wrong with me?"

Shannon was quiet for a moment, turning over thoughts. "What do you mean?"

"It's not – it's not when I think it is. And the way – the way they looked at me." Jeff's eyes moved under his lips, a flicker of a frown. "Everything's wrong. I'm so confused. Like I don't know which way is up." He opened his eyes, darkly shining. "I can't think straight."

"Jeff." Shannon bit his lip, ran a hand though his hair (down now, soft). "You think it's October."

"Yeah."

"You know that's not right, don't you?"

"Yeah." Just a sigh.

"Do you remember anything, Jeff?"

A pause. Stillness. Their common breathing. Then the faintest tremble of Jeff's swollen lips. He shook his head. Shannon's heart tripped inside him, vertiginous.

"I guess that's something we have to talk to the doctor about."

Jeff turned his face away, his eyes tracking shadows, seeking nothing. Quietly: "Yeah."


End file.
